by Glen Cook
A subject on which she and the Ninth Unknown had wasted hours speculating, as an intellectual game. She thought the old man had it right. Instrumentalities did not die in the normal course, they faded into obscurity and quiescence, becoming one with the mud in the swamps of the Night. Unless somebody actively tried to kill, consume, contain, or shatter the Instrumentality. Then it could cease to be. Except, possibly, as a constituent fragment in another Instrumentality.
Eyeing Asgrimmur as she thought that.
His Norgens might be out of business but they would be out there, somewhere. Sleeping. A clever someone might find a way to waken them. As clever someones had been wakening grander and more terrible Instrumentalities.
“All right. Let’s go talk to the old women. But tomorrow we come back with paint and chalk and measuring lines. We’ll lay out fields of fire.”
The ascendant looked baffled. And was.
The soul at the heart of him was a man two hundred years out of his native time. He had not lived through the changes of all those years.
Thus his gods had taken even more.
***
Hours with the reluctant dwarf women equipped Heris with the key details about the Old Ones. She wrote everything down on parchment provided by the dwarves, using quills and inks manufactured by the Aelen Kofer.
Thus, when she rose in the morning what she had written the evening before was still there, despite what might have become of her memories. What she left herself included notes and messages about the rest of the information and thoughts about how it all could be used.
Heris visited the Great Sky Fortress every “morning.” She explored new areas each time but always visited the hall that Asgrimmur insisted was the one where he had imprisoned the Old Ones. She used a lot of chalk and paint, both in there and for marking routes through the confusion.
***
“Asgrimmur. It’s eight days since everybody left.”
“Which could be only hours in the middle world. A day at most.”
“Not so much my worry.”
“Then?”
“I need you to take a trip with me. I want to show you something. Out there.” She waved a hand at the gateway.
The old dwarf women started complaining before Heris finished explaining what she wanted.
“Enough,” the ascendant said. “Do as you have been told.” He began to change.
Heris was behind him. She did not see what he showed the dwarves. It made an impression. The complaints stopped. None of the three spoke again till they brought their small boat to a stop just outside the gateway to the Realm of the Gods.
“Good fortune attend you,” said the eldest.
“Fair weather attend you,” said another.
And the last, “Take no needless risks, girl.”
All three used a language Heris understood, albeit with brutal accents.
“Thank you, grandmothers.” She meant it. “Come here, Asgrimmur.”
***
“Did you have visions or strong emotions when we were translating?” Heris asked.
“I visited Hell. A darkness infested with nightmares.” He was shaking, not because of the cold.
“Then it must be me. Something I’m doing.”
“What are you talking about? And what is that foul smell?”
They stood on a cold gray hillside amid lifeless broken rocks, most of which boasted sharp edges. Ice filled any crevice the sun did not reach. A steady wind brought both a bone-biting chill and the reek of corruption. But the sky above was a cheerful expanse of pale blue occasionally marred by the hurried passage of a twisting cotton puff.
The wind also sang with a thousand voices as it played amongst the massive shards of stone. The chorus was a dirge.
Heris said, “Follow me. And stay low. We don’t want to silhouette ourselves against the sky.”
Asgrimmur finally understood that he was far from the old dwarf women. “What did you do?”
“Quiet would be a big help, too.”
Heris crept to the ridgeline, thinking she had changed a lot in very little time. Relatively speaking. Not just since Grade Drocker rescued her but since Grandfather Delari brought Gisors — Piper — back into her life. Not so long ago she had been a slave, a Chaldarean used and abused in what the idiots there were pleased to call the Realm of Peace. Now she was a wild adventuress clambering across an arctic hillside with a demigod, thousands of miles from the cities of her shame.
She reached the vantage she wanted, slowly lifted her head. She beckoned Asgrimmur. “Come up here. Slowly.”
The ascendant did so.
“That’s it, Asgrimmur. The monster god. And his worshippers.” Two starved forms huddled for warmth beside the Instrumentality’s putrescent flank, probably so mad and weak they could do nothing if they did spot the watchers.
The stench was overpowering. Heris breathed through her mouth but that helped only a little.
“That’s the dread Windwalker? That’s why we need to free the Old Ones?”
“That’s him. But others of his kind are loose, now, too.”
Kharoulke the Windwalker, in summer, sprawled across the shingle, just above the agonizing touch of the sea, resembling nothing so much as a decaying jellyfish more massive than a beached pod of blue whales. Unhealed wounds leaked treacle-darkness that dribbled down the god’s side to the shingle, then crept away into the brine.
The ascendant asked, “Why are we worried about that?”
“Because the Instrumentality, diminished, survives inside that offal. Waiting. Because winter always comes. And winter here is long and bitter. The Windwalker will thrive in that. If we don’t conquer it first.”
Heris had to admit it was hard to consider that stinking mass a threat. It was hard to believe that she could not destroy it herself, given logistical and technical support.
She would not get that. However much the Ninth Unknown said he believed in her, he would never support her the way he would her brother.
There was just no way to improve the thinking of men.
The ascendant asked, “Are you going to do more than look?”
“No.”
“It knows we’re here.”
“What?”
“I feel it calling someone to deal with us.”
“The rot. Is it just camouflage …? Asgrimmur?”
“I’m all right. I was … It senses me, not us. It smells the part of me that conquered it two thousand years ago. It wouldn’t have noticed you by yourself. It’s sending someone to deal with me.”
Heris could get her mind around that. The ascendant belonged to the Night. She, on the other hand, could come and go, ephemeral, unnoticed until she attacked that stinking earthly aspect down there.
“We should probably leave, then.” Heris began backing away.
“Too late.”
A spotted thing, brown on a snake’s belly color background, popped over the ridge, fast. Distilled ferocity, it charged the ascendant.
It was no bigger than a squirrel.
Asgrimmur snatched it out of the air. It tried to bite. He smashed its head against a rock, then examined its fingers. “Somebody exaggerated, didn’t they?”
Heris caught her breath. “No. The god’s power to create, and to influence the world around him, has gotten real weak. Can you sense anything on the supernatural level?”
Asgrimmur turned the miniature creature, poked it. “The Instrumentality is disappointed. This thing was Krepnight, the Elect. It was created by the god. It was supposed to be my size but faster, deadlier, and more single-minded.”
The slope shuddered. Rocks shifted but the tremor was not violent enough to initiate a slide. The beached god wobbled and jiggled.
“It’s crazy with rage but doesn’t have strength for anything but trying to stay alive. For a long time, naturally.”
“Handy skill, reading a god’s mind without getting your own baked.”
“I’m not reading its mind, Heris. It woul
d love to have me try. It would make me over into an ascendant Krepnight, the Elect, in three heartbeats. Then it would turn me loose on you and the others.”
“You know that without being able to read its mind?”
“It’s simple. I feel its emotions. I think about what the god side of me would do in its place, if I had its power.” Asgrimmur moved up for a better view of the shingle.
Heris joined him. “Is this safe?”
“It is now. For a while. If you want, you can go throw salt water on just to be nasty.”
“I didn’t remember to bring a bucket.”
“You’d be destroying only what it’s written off already, anyway.”
“And there are the priests.” She pointed.
“They’re no problem. He used them up to make Krepnight, the Elect.”
Hungry seabirds surrounded the dead already.
It seemed instructive that carrion eaters would not touch the Windwalker.
Heris asked, “Are you learning anything now?”
“I’m always …” He realized that the question was not general. “From the Instrumentality? Yes.”
“Is it anything we might find useful to the fight? Because if it is, I’ll stay here till my eyeballs freeze. But, otherwise, not. Otherwise, I’d just as soon get the hell out of here, now.”
“Give me a few minutes. Unless you have a pressing need.”
“I do have a need. But, go ahead. Knock yourself out. I’ve got nowhere to go but home.”
36. The Connec: Journey
Brother Candle had no trouble getting away from Khaurene in the confusion after the fall of King Regard. He did not go alone. More than thirty Maysaleans joined him, bringing carts, wagons, livestock, and wealth, as though begging for the attention of bandits.
They could help him, yes. He was sure he could not survive the journey alone. But, on the other hand, they could get him killed.
They wanted to leave Khaurene in a clement season, before Anne of Menand extracted her vengeance. Which they knew would come, as surely as nightfall.
What they would not hear was advice. What they would not hear was the Perfect’s warnings about the dangers of travel.
He told them to head south and cross the Verses Mountains into Navaya Medien, where the Church and Society had little reach and Arnhand had none. Where heretics were welcome so long as they brought useful skills and a willingness to work. Navaya Medien was a land depleted of people, first by a long-ago plague, then by two centuries of vicious, no-quarter warfare between Chaldarean kings and Praman kaifs.
Peace had returned. Peter of Navaya had pushed the war zone away to the south. The Chaldarean triumph at Los Naves de los Fantas guaranteed that the Pramans could not become seriously obnoxious for a generation.
But these emigrants were all intimates from the Khaurenese Maysalean community: the Archimbaults and their neighbors. Most were folk with whom Brother Candle had shared exile in the Altai. Ferocious Kedle Richeut, née Archimbault, was now a leader, possibly the most respected. But these days she wore a new name: Alazais Record, after a female Perfect murdered by the Society.
She used the false name because it was no secret that a young Maysalean mother named Kedle Richeut had loosed the shaft that made an end of Regard of Menand.
The band followed the southern road to Castreresone. That passed through friendlier country. At Kedle’s insistence each member of the group old enough to heft a weapon had brought arms out of Khaurene. Those had been easy to acquire in the confusion. Brother Candle added a codicil to every prayer imploring the Good God to shelter his people.
Nevertheless, trouble came near Homodel, which still showed evidence of the fighting during the Captain-General’s scourging of the Connec. Castreresone was not half a day’s journey away. But bandits were out and bold.
The travelers found the road blocked by four armed men. The leader wore knight’s armor but showed neither pennon nor device. He was the only mounted man. He held his helmet in his lap. His contempt for Maysaleans was manifest.
Brother Candle did not follow what the man said when first he spoke. His accent was thick. The gist, though, was that they should clear away from his wagons and livestock.
In a strong, calm voice, while handing her baby to her cousin Guillemette, Kedle said, “Clear the road. You get no further warning.”
At which the mounted man laughed.
His companions were less confident.
He bent to tell them something …
Kedle swung a ready crossbow out of a donkey cart and put a bolt into the knight’s right eye. She traded the crossbow for a spear and rushed the men on foot.
Every witness knew the girl was going to kill all three and there was nothing they could do. The bandits themselves knew.
The youngest, clearly unwell and only about fourteen, bolted.
Kedle hit the others like Death’s angel, wasting not an instant of their stunned inaction. She wounded the heavier by stabbing him in the inner thigh. He staggered back, making a whimpering noise. The other was twice Kedle’s size. His weapon was a rusty long sword. He wielded that with both hands, in wild strokes. Kedle backed away, circled, got the fallen knight’s horse on her shield arm side.
Strange things happen on battlefields. On this one the knight’s horse did not move after its rider got hit. The knight himself fell off and lay on his face in the road, his left foot still tangled in a stirrup.
The girl pricked the horse. It surged forward, dragging its erstwhile rider, shouldering the bandit with the sword. His guard was open for an instant. She slipped the head of her spear up under his chin and shoved. Then she went after the wounded man, who was making a limping effort to escape. He was losing blood. She ignored his pleas. She stuck him till he stopped moving. She seemed possessed.
She returned in a rage. “What is the matter with you people? Not one of you lifted a finger to protect yourselves. What if there had been more of them out there in the woods?”
Raulet Archimbault said, “Poppet, that’s why …”
“That isn’t why. You froze. Every last one of you. Like rabbits who hope the fox won’t notice. What happened to all those loudmouthed wolves who were howling before we left Khaurene? And you. Old man. Master. You’re the experienced traveler. Why did you just stand there with your thumb in your mouth?”
“I’m used to talking my way through confrontations.”
“You’re used to being too damned poor to rob and to not having women along. There wasn’t going to be any talking your way around those four.” She dropped to her knees beside the fallen knight, tried to recover her bolt. It would not come loose. She kicked the corpse viciously. Then she took his foot out of his stirrup so the horse would not have to drag a dead man everywhere. “Go on, horse.” She faced the party. “There would’ve been rapes and murders. You know it.”
She was right.
Kedle returned to her cart. She took the crossbow out and spanned it again, the while glaring around. “You people better not get my children killed.” Then, “Othon! Let the dead be. They don’t have anything we want.”
“But …”
“Othon.”
The man, twice Kedle’s age and twice her size, left the dead knight. Kedle said, “Let somebody else plunder them and get caught with the evidence.” She returned the ready crossbow to the cart, took her youngest back from Guillemette, said, “Let’s go. And nobody says a word about this when we get to Castreresone. Or ever.”
The rattle, clank, and squeak started up.
No one spoke for a long time.
The earth had shifted under all their feet.
“Not a word, Master,” Kedle said when he fell in beside her. “I won’t hear your nonsense.”
“As you wish.”
The silence got to her eventually. “I was moved by a grand example, Master. Duke Tormond IV.”
“But Tormond would not have …”
“Exactly. He would have procrastinated. He would have tempo
rized. He would have talked. He would have done everything to avoid making a decision that might upset somebody. Or, worse, would compel him to act. As a consequence, we would find ourselves with a homeland where half the people were persecuted, foreign armies would roam around as they pleased, and it would be lethally dangerous to use the roads.”
The old man could not answer that.
There was a counterargument. Pacifists always had one. But he had become embedded too deeply in the everyday world to bring a good one to mind.
He did mutter, “But three men are dead,” understanding that it was an absurd remark as he made it.
“Leaving the rest of us, the people we care about, alive and unharmed. Eh?”
How did you argue with true believers in mathematics and human nature?
***
There were problems at Castreresone. The consuls had decided not to let any more refugees into the city, whether or not they had relatives inside. But those relatives could come out and talk. They could provide food and drink, blankets and clothing and such.
Castreresone had not yet fully recovered from its romance with the old Captain-General. The suburb called Inconje, where the big bridge crossed the Laur, had been abandoned by its original inhabitants. Now it housed a thousand refugees. Brother Candle saw many familiar faces. All were tired of travel and its constant fear. Many had lost everything to bandits.
Brother Candle’s group did not want to face those risks anymore, despite his assurances that they would be welcomed by Count Raymone Garete. Pettish, the Perfect told Raulet Archimbault, “I’m probably wrong about that welcome, anyway. He’s looking for people with some spine. People willing to help turn the tide of evil drowning the Connec.” He stopped. Kedle sneered at him from the shadows beyond the communal fire. Little Raulet snuggled under her left arm. The baby nursed at her right breast.
The old man left the fire, rolled himself into his blanket. He was well and truly lost. He was further from Perfection than most raw students. They were blessed with an eagerness to learn, to achieve salvation. Too much exposure to life had made him over into a cynical old man. He would have to go round the Wheel of Life several times to get back to where he had been, arriving at St. Jeules for the synod of the Perfects, not that long ago.
